I’m fascinated by what drives referees to take on the challenge of
running an adventure. Rarely rewarding financially and dreadfully time
consuming, why bother? Judging by my own drives it’s probably a mixture
of things: desperation to play Traveller
so-if-no-one-else-will-ref-I-will, players being appreciative of the
effort, love of performance, wanting to tell a good story, eagerness to
help out a convention organizer who has slots to fill, wanting to
showcase Traveller to newbies, wanting to
entertain a group of players, having an interesting idea and wondering
where it will go, and probably as many other reasons as there are
referees.

But it’s that penultimate one that this year’s TravCon (“After-Action
Report: TravCon 2015”) really brought home to me. I’ve been perhaps
fortunate in that my first two years refereeing seemed to be so well
received I was encouraged to do more. Last year I tried harder and ran
two games in three slots but for the first time found myself apologizing
for what had happened to a character – although the player took it in
good heart. This year, amongst the 22 players involved in the 9 hours of
role playing I was taking a hand in refereeing, I looked up at one point
to find two players seriously unengaged and at another point found a
player was struggling due to a corner he was backed into.

I wasn’t upset with them for not loving the adventure, I was cross
with myself for having failed them. There are so many games at TravCon
in so few slots that hard choices have to be made and I always count it
a huge privilege anyone chooses to play my adventures.

Trying to unpick the ‘whys’ afterwards, I discovered that one had
found the mixture of dynasties rolling on across the ages and slipping
backwards in terms of tech level had deprived him of too much
psychological investment in his dynasty, another had found the lack of
it being a standard format game too much of a change (perhaps my
warnings had been insufficient), and the third suffered from two
referees looking after a grand melee of 11 players at once meaning that
individual character autonomy slipped through the cracks (I’d been
warned about this and was trying hard to make sure I gave anyone who
wanted it, time enough). In retrospect, I think all three players (and
there may have been more I didn’t pick up on), had fair complaints.

While I know you can’t please all of the people all of the time, I
certainly want to and the experience has been good in learning about
boundaries, what works or not, and player engagement. It will also make
me redouble my efforts to write and run the very best adventures I can
even if they still fall short of perfection. Of course “deep down” “I
really just want to be loved” as Ford Prefect and the Vogon captain in
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
argue but more than that I hate letting the side down.